노르웨이 국립도서관이 작가와 출판 단체에 비용을 지불 하고 문학작품을 온라인에서 공짜로 읽을 수 있도록 해 독자들의 호응을 얻고 있다.
국립도서관이 개설한 웹사이트 'bokhylla.no'에 들어가면 15만 개가 넘는 작품
을 무료로 내려받을 수 있다. 'bokhylla'는 노르웨이어로 '책꽂이'라는 뜻이다.
사이트에 올라와 있는 노르웨이 국내 작품은 2001년 이전에 발표된 작품들로, 1920년 노벨문학상을 수상한 쿤트 함순부터 인기 현대 작가 요 네스뵈의 소설까지 망라돼 있다.
스티븐 킹과 존 스타인벡, 켄 폴렛 등 유명 외국작가들의 작품도 상당수 포함돼 있다.
국립도서관은 5년 안에 외국작품까지 포함해 25만 개로 작품의 범위를 늘릴 계 획이다.
국립도서관 측은 주요 작가와 출판사들 연합 단체인 '코피노르'와 협약을 맺고 '온라인 공짜 독서'를 성사시켰다.
국립도서관이 작품을 디지털화해 온라인에 올릴 때 미리 결정돼 있는 액수를 장 당으로 계산해 '코피노르'에 지급하는 식이다.
온라인으로 제공되는 작품의 양이 늘어나면서 장당 지급 비용은 작년 0.36크로네(한화 61원)에서 2015년 0.33크로네(56원)로 점점 내려간다.
저자를 보호하기 위한 장치들도 있다. 2000년 이후에 출간된 작품은 제외돼 있고, 저자나 출판사가 작품을 빼달라고 요청할 수도 있다.
하지만 그런 요청은 많지 않았고 지금까지 시장에서의 문학작품 매출에도 큰 영 향이 없었다.
오히려 저작권은 살아 있지만 서점에선 절판된 작품들에 새 생명을 주게 됐다는 게 국립도서관장인 빅디스 모에 스카르스테인의 얘기다.
노르웨이에서는 저자 사후 70년까지 저작권이 보호된다.
외국에서는 저작권 문제로 난항을 겪는 사업이 노르웨이에서 성공할 수 있었던 것은 '코피노르'로 작가 및 출판 단체들이 집중돼 이해당사자가 한정된 덕분이기도 하다.
스카르스테인 관장은 "저작권 소유자들을 찾아내는 건 어려운 일이고 이들을 일 일이 찾아내는 데 돈을 쓰느니 그 돈을 (단체에) 주는 걸 택했다"고 말했다. (연합뉴스)
<관련 영문 기사>
Literature goes online for free in Norway
Most books published in Norway before 2001 are going online for free thanks to an initiative that may have found the formula to reconcile authors with the web.
At a time when the publishing world is torn over its relationship to the Internet -- which has massively expanded access to books but also threatens royalty revenues -- the National Library of Norway is digitising tens of thousands of titles, from masterworks by Nobel laureate Knut Hamsun to the first detective novels by Nordic noir king Jo Nesboe.
The copyright-protected books are available free online -- with the consent of the copyright holders -- at the website bokhylla.no ("bookshelf" in Norwegian).
The site currently features 135,000 works and will eventually reach 250,000, including Norwegian translations of foreign books.
National Library head Vigdis Moe Skarstein said the project is the first of its kind to offer free online access to books still under copyright, which in Norway expires 70 years after the author's death.
"Many national libraries digitise their collections for conservation reasons or even to grant access to them, but those are (older) books that are already in the public domain," she said.
"We thought that, since we had to digitise all our collection in order to preserve it for the next 1,000 years, it was also important to broaden access to it as much as possible."
The National Library has signed an agreement with Kopinor, an umbrella group representing major authors and publishers through 22 member organisations.
For every digitised page that goes online, the library pays a predetermined sum to Kopinor, which will be responsible for distributing the royalties among its members under a system that is still being worked out.
The per-page amount decreases gradually as the collection expands – from 0.36 kroner (0.04 euros, $0.06) last year to 0.33 kroner next year.
"A bestseller is treated on an equal footing with a regional almanac from the 1930s," said Yngve Slettholm, head of Kopinor.
Some measures have been implemented to protect the authors: "Bokhylla" does not feature works published after 2000, access is limited to Internet users in Norway and foreign researchers, and the books cannot be downloaded.
An author or publishing house that objects can also request the removal of a book, but relatively few have done so.
Only 3,500 books have been removed from the list, and most of them are not bestselling novels, but rather school and children's books -- two very profitable genres for publishers.
Among all the works eligible to appear on "Bokhylla" by household names Stephen King, Ken Follett, John Steinbeck, Jo Nesboe and Kari Fossum, only a few are missing.
So far, sales do not appear to have been affected by the project. Instead, "Bokhylla" often gives a second life to works that are still under copyright but sold out at bookshops, said National Library head Moe Skarstein.
"Books are increasingly becoming perishable goods," she said.
"When the novelty effect fades out, they sink into oblivion."
Eight-five percent of all books available on the site have been accessed by users at some point, proving that digitising does not only benefit major works.
While many countries' attempts at digital libraries have gotten stuck in complex copyright discussions, Norway has been successful partly due to the limited number of stakeholders -- the library and Kopinor -- and the near-universal coverage of their agreement, which even includes authors who are not Kopinor members.
"In other countries, you need an agreement among all the copyright holders," said Slettholm, the head of Kopinor.
"But it's hard to find all of them: old authors that nobody knows, publishing houses that closed in the 1960s, every illustrator, every photographer."
"Instead of spending our money on trying to find the copyright holders, we prefer to give it to them," Moe Skarstein said. (AFP)
